Prof. Allen Taflove congragulated Norko, by stating, "The NSF Fellowship is the "gold standard." It is a terrific honor that recognizes great promise as a Ph.D. engineer/scientist."

Prof. Allen Taflove congragulated Norko, by stating, "The NSF Fellowship is the "gold standard." It is a terrific honor that recognizes great promise as a Ph.D. engineer/scientist."

Norko graduated from Northwestern in 2011 with a double major in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. After completing her undergraduate studies, she began working at Argon ST, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing) as a Systems Engineer and continued as an Applied Mathematician performing research and development projects in signal processing for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Norko is currently persuing her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech, where she is working in computer vision and researching new techniques for performing object recognition with very little required training data.

The National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions.

Fellows share in the prestige and opportunities that become available when they are selected. Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $32,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose.

NSF received over 14,000 applications for the 2014 competition, and made 2,000 fellowship award offers.

Norko said, "It's very exciting and really opens up possibilities for the rest of my PhD. I appreciated the support I have received at Northwestern and continue to appreciate it as I move further in my academic career."